ArcaMax

SAN DIEGO -- This Thanksgiving dinner, Vice President JD Vance might need a taste tester.

The Yale Law School graduate has for years benefited from the assumption that he's a smart cookie. Yet Vance has a knack for saying dumb things, and that's when the public image begins to crumble.

Last month, when Politico published hundreds of racist and hateful messages from a private group chat among young Republicans that included racial slurs about Latinos and Black people and praise for Adolf Hitler and gas chambers, the vice president shrugged it off.

"The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys," Vance said during an appearance on "The Charlie Kirk Show," the podcast created by the late conservative activist.

Two weeks later, the vice president doubled down on dumb. While speaking at Turning Point USA event at the University of Mississippi, Vance managed to fit both feet into his mouth.

A member of the audience, who identified herself as an immigrant, asked Vance about his call to reduce legal immigration into the United States and what he is doing to teach his kids "not to keep your religion ahead of their mother's religion."

Vance converted to Catholicism six years ago. He has since made religion a major part of his political narrative.

In response to the question, Vance said that he would like to see his wife convert to Christianity.

"Do I hope eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved in by church? Yeah, I honestly, I do wish that, because I believe in the Christian gospel," he said. "And I hope eventually my wife comes to see it the same way."

Then he attached an amendment.

"But if she doesn't, then God says, 'Everybody has free will,' and so that doesn't cause a problem for me," he said. "That's something you work out with your friends, with your family, with the person that you love."

Meanwhile, second lady Usha Vance -- the daughter of Hindu Indian immigrants -- has said that she is not planning to become Catholic and that Hindu traditions are part of her children's lives, even though the three of them are being raised as Christians.

"I'm not intending to convert or anything like that," Usha Vance said several months ago during an interview on Meghan McCain's podcast. We make going to church a family experience. The kids know that I'm not Catholic, and they have plenty of access to the Hindu tradition, from books that we give them to things that we show them to the visit recently to India, and some of the religious elements of that visit."

Politics and marriage are two wildly different things. Being good at one doesn't mean you'll automatically be good at the other.

Politics is easy to understand. Just follow the money, assume all politicians are lying all the time and never forget that the only thing they care about is getting reelected so they can keep their cushy jobs.

Marriage is more complicated. I've been in one that works, and one that didn't. After spending 23 years in the game, when I heard what the vice president had said -- in public, no less -- I was aghast.

Vance would have done well to recall the words of the Prophet William. Better known as "Billy," as in Billy Joel. In his classic ballad, "Just The Way You Are," the Long Island crooner sings: "I would not leave you in times of trouble/We never could have come this far/I took the good times, I'll take the bad times/I take you just the way you are."

In Vance's case, his marital vows might conflict with his burning ambition to become president. There is a faction of the conservative movement that detests foreigners, even legal immigrants from India such as Usha's parents. Vance might feel as though he needs to avoid antagonizing them to get the 2028 GOP presidential nomination.

The racist and anti-Semitic white nationalists known as "groypers" are led by 27-year-old Nick Fuentes, who refers to Vance disdainfully as a "fat guy who's married to a jeet." The term is an ethnic slur aimed at those from South Asia. As far as these idiots are concerned, Vance is disqualified from the presidency because of who he married.

Social etiquette dictates that, in public, we shouldn't discuss religion or politics. Maybe the real topics to avoid are religion and marriage.

Taken alone, those two things are fine. It's when you toss in politics that things can get really polluted.

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To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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